NEUTER OR GET RID OF

QUICK ACCESS

We’re sure plenty of people find the Quick Access menu in File Explorer useful. We find it a waste of space and an extra click we have to deal with whenever we start it up.

Now the easy way to deal with it is to neuter its functionality. In File Explorer, click on ‘ View’ at the top of the window, then on ‘Options’ to bring up Folder Options. Change the field ‘Open File Explorer to:’ to ‘This PC’ in the drop down menu. Then uncheck the two boxes under privacy. Once you’ve OK’d that, Quick Access will still be there in File Explorer, but it will be empty and won’t be the default folder when you open File Explorer.

Once you’ve done this, you can now even use the Quick Access menu like the old Favourites menu. Right click on a folder and select ‘Pin to Quick Access’, and a link will be created under Quick Access. You can right click on the folder name again to unpin it.

If you want to get rid of Quick Access altogether, it’s possible, but not easy (and probably not worth it, unless you really hate Quick Access). You first have to change the ‘Open File Explorer to:’ field as above, or you will get an error. Then you have to open regedit (see opposite) and navigate to the entry:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID{679f85cb-0220-4080-b29b5540cc05aab6}

Right click on the sub menu ‘ShellFolder’ and select ‘Permissions’. Click on ‘Advanced’, then on the link to ‘Change the owner of the folder’. Click on ‘Advanced’ again, then on the ‘Find now’ button and select ‘Administrators’. Now that the folder is owned by Administrator (that’s you) keep clicking on OK/Apply until you get back to Regedit.

Finally, you can now right click on ‘Attributes’ in ShellFolder, select ‘Modify’ and change the value from a0100000 to a0600000. Restart Windows and Quick Access should be gone.